Mission Orders

The time for the Dark Dungeon jailbreak is at hand! At the request of the Manustery, you are to collect the ministry rings from all the five ministers.

Walkthrough

The preparation can be done solo. Get the mission from a gate guard and trot over to the Manustery to speak with Apururu. She explains that her brother is locked in the Dark Dungeon and only you can save him. You must collect the five minister rings to open the dungeon door. These rings are mostly from past missions - you have to go speak with the Minister NPCs to collect them. Collect four rings from:

Once the four rings have been collected, speak with Apururu again. She will then send you to Kupipi (receptionist in Heavens Tower). She will tell you that to collect the last ring, you must go to the Amaryllis Tower of the Outer Horutoto Ruins.

A party of at least 14 adventurers of level 65 or higher is recommended for the fight. Go to the West Sarutabaruta tower at (F-4). Once inside, go through the Cracked Wall at (I-6), then to the Cracked Wall at (G-7). Med to full and buff up before examining the wall as doing so will trigger the fight.

Once the mobs are dead, examine the Cracked Wall for a cutscene, then return to Windurst and talk to Apururu again. She will direct you to Shantotto. After another cutscene, Shantotto will give you the key item: Glove of Perpetual Twilight and direct you back to Apururu.

During this next cutscene with Apururu, she'll ask you to meet her at the Dark Dungeon. Head to the Inner Horutoto Ruins entrance at (J-7) in East Sarutabaruta. Go past the Three Mage Gate and at (I-7), you will find the Gate of Darkness. Examine it for a cutscene.

Return to Apururu in Windurst for a final cutscene, Rank 9, and 80,000 gil. If you'd like to see more of the storyline, speak to Shantotto.

I was skeptical of my chances at first, with most all of my friends/LS mates telling me I would need to go /nin but decided to give it a whirl. One of the rare advantages of Third Eye over Utsusemi is attacks like Bludgeon (or Goblin Rush, but that's neither here nor there) that are absorbed by a single "anticipation" rather than eating multiple shadows... unfortunately, it did nothing to avoid Deal Out which would hit for a consistent ~150-200 damage.

The fight was remarkably simple, and relatively easy. I didn't do anything fancy with preparations (Meditate/melee ghouls to 300tp, buff, let my NPC buddy recover her MP, and popped a silent oil), clicked the wall, and pulled with /ra. The PLD card has a ton of HP (around 7,000) and it's already high def buffed with Protect IV made the fight a bit longer than it needed to be. The Queen of Swords used her two-hour at about 70% and so to counter I threw Defender on, disengaged, disbanded my npc buddy and resummoned from a tactics pearl (for a fresh MP pool) and I finished up the fight at 1144/1429 HP never dipping below 1000HP. Tachi: Yukikaze and Kasha were huge benefits during this fight as the paralyze from Kasha proc'd fairly often. As others have noted, the NMs can't be slienced so I only used Tachi: Gekko for SCing.

The RDM despawned during the fight which was over 3:12 after the initial engagement. Very fun fight, all in all.

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SAM TP | SAM WS | For a greater economy shall follow us and it will be outdone. And a greater autonomy shall follow us and it too will be outdone. And a greater feeling shall follow Love and it too we will blow to dust.Retired. For reals this time.

Just soloed this as a 75Nin/37Whm, fairly easy fight, put silence up pop'd the two cards and pulled the Rdm card with ranged attack, the pld despawned while i was fighting the rdm, paralyze took care of chainspell, and slowly took it down. I'm sure anyone can do the same............

I just solo'd this as 75RDM/NIN but anyone can do it at even lower level if they wanted to.

All you need to do is fully buff and med your MP back then sneak yourself and pop the NMs.

Next you have some way of pulling the PLD cardian non-magically like a bow or a dart and do so.

The next step is to Bio2 + Poison2 it as you run towards the zone, reapply shadows whenever it is casting a spell which will only be Banish2 or Flash. Once you get close to zone cast Gravity and then proceed to zone. Heal yourself quickly on zone and reapply shadows/Refresh etc. and re-enter. Recast your Bio2 and perhaps cast a nuke then zone again. Repeat this process again but instead cast Poison2 and perhaps Gravity again if you notice that it has run a ways down the stairs and lure it back up to zone and zone.

Keep repeating this process and eventually it's HPs will drop to around 20% when it starts to spam Cure4 whenever you aggro it. At this point, hopefully your Convert is ready if not keep repeating the process until it is ready.

Once Convert is ready use it, heal up full and prepare to Chainspell your best nuke for the kill.

Trio'd as 72RDM/36NIN (me), 75WHM/15?NIN, and 60THF/30NIN. Fight went very well. I used a tav. taco for food and tanked the Queen of Swords. After we defeated her the RDM NM had depopped. The PLD NM has pretty high defense. Evisceration didn't do well on her. Best RDM choice for this NM is to use the Martial Anelace and Spirit's Within.

Duo'd this with 75whm/37smn(me) and 75sam/37nin, was not hard at all. Sam cleared out all bones in the area while I medded from casting buffs. Carby pulled the Queen of Cups(rdm) as far south in that pathway, then killed like any normal mob. Silence was not sticking, but I dont have capped enfeeb anyways. Chainspell was completely useless because the Queen was paralyzed. Ended with 160/801 mp, didnt med through the whole fight, and used stoneskin+martyr. By the time we finished, other cardian had depopped, so we got the scene easially.

okay did this fight two times...as the smn did not have all her footwork done so the set up was NIN (me) rdm thf whm first fight....I suggest thf pull with rng on pld and no link....well she is too close and the rdm agros her so we fight both at once.....no big deal though the RDM kites the RDM Queen around while I tank the PLD he does invincible and had no problem as posted bringing him down at 20% as others have posted....he did cure but those cure III's and Cure IV mean little when u get the tar beat out of you....soooo finally the SMN gets her footwork done...and the WHM is gone and a BLU is coming so its SMN NIN RDM THF BLU well the SMN gets their and she pops the NM while only me and RDM are near here so she gets a beat down but does not die RDM takes RDM queen away and i voke the pld off her....with 150 HP left...so both fights went pretty smooth....deal out and bludgeon the only scares which can take down shawdows.....got 27ish exp on each fight....so I would say these would not be 72 lv NM's but more like 65-70ish as far as EXP is concerned and from what I read waaaaaaaaay too much footwork involved....glad im not a windurstian he he he he good luck to all....bring a tank and RDM and this fight is an easy duo at 75 even if things go wrong lol....

Just trioed it 75SAM/NIN(me), 72 WHM/BLM and 68RDM/BLM. It was cake, keeping shadows up wasn't a problem and I only went through 15 shihei. WHM hardly used any MP. RDM chainspelled it towards the end to speed things up but we'd have won anyway. We all meleed.

It took 10613(healed 2021) damage btw.

Edited, Fri Jun 23 21:39:20 2006

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but see... that's what I'm talking about! Now Venture will send Sampson after the rest of us and he'll go totally sickhouse on our ********

Just thought I would save ppl the trouble of backtracking in case the same thing that happened to us happenes to others. After obtaining all of the key items and speaking to all of the NPCs mentioned in the guide, we arrived at the second cracked door and could not pop the NMs. We consulted several sources online with no mention of this happening, so we retraced our steps and reviewed our chat logs...just in case we had somehow missed something. We had done everything correctly, and had gone to the correct location.

We waited until the game day changed and went back and they popped no problem. We knew another group had been doing Windy missions the same day, nd we assume that perhaps they had recently killed the NMS and there is X amount of cooldown time and we just happened to arrive within that cooldown window.

You can pop the NMs with Sneak up, then if you run out of their aggro range, you can use any non-magical ranged attack to just pull the PLD (Queen of Swords) and the RDM *will not* link.

The PLD NM is fairly easy to bring down. It has really high defense, can't be Silenced, but is otherwise susceptible to enfeebling magic. The one minor irritation is that when it gets below 20% HP it uses well over half its spells to cast Cure IV on itself, and it doesn't seem that you can easily interrupt its casting via melee damage.

The only 2 WSs it uses on you are Bludgeon and Deal Out. Both seem to be damage-only single target WSs that strip multiple shadows. Deal Out takes 2, Bludgeon takes 3.

A little patience and you'll wear it down in time. As a note, Garuda's Dagger didn't proc, so I used Martial Anelace + Joyeuse for most of the fight to get stronger WSs.

Sticking Bio II is also handy to keep nice steady DoT on the NM, since you can't sleep it anyway.

I tried twice, and had to (|Run away!|) both times. It seemed that when it got to about 20% that not only did it start curing itself (which it always seemed to do when I was recasting Stoneskin or Refresh, so I couldn't try to stun it wtih Flat Blade), but it also interrupted my spells more and used more TP moves. Maybe I just got unlucky.

I was using Guespiere (which didn't proc, either)+ Joyeuse. Took about 15-20 minutes to get him down to 20%.

My first attempt, I tried using Dia II (for lower defense). The result was nominal, though, and I opted for Bio II the second time (she sure hits hard for a PLD...). I casted Poison II for a while, but it really wasn't worth it (better use of time/MP elsewhere). Melee damage is plenty DoT anyway.

This can be done solo as Rdm/Nin. Sneak pop and pull the queen of swords(pld). Straight up fight it, if you're worried you might die, bind/gravity to the zone so you have an escape route. Once its at 20% life it will start casting cure4 like mad. You won't be able to defeat it unless you have a great dd setup. I didn't have a joyeuse, so I meleed it best I could. The trick is, once it has around 5-10% life left, gravity, bind, convert, chainspell, bliz/thunder3 to finish it off.

We buffed up, whm sneaks and pulls the rdm cardian with carby. After a couple of minutes the PLD despawns. Thf tanked with ease and blm dropped to yellow once. We check door after fight and we win w/o having to fight the pld =/

I did this last night easily with 4 people. Set-up: all 73-75 nin/war, sam/war, brd/whm,<me> whm/blm. We popped the cards and the sam got hate and kited the rdm card running in a big circle around the whole area while we killed the pld. I just hit the sam with a cure or erase when he ran by if he needed it. Once the pld was done we worked on the rdm. It took some time by it went well. Plus we moved back to the hallway to fight away from the ghouls cuz they will aggro if you rest without sneak...and it was just annoying.

just to let you know, sleep bolt proc rate was 0% on the queen of swords at 75 rng. Popped with sneak on, pulled with normal ranged attack. Only the one i shot at came at me. Got 12 shots off before my E rated evasion got the best of me and it started pounding me. So dont think you can sleep bolt this one to death.

Just did this last night with a 75PLD (me), 74 RNG, 71 RDM, 70 BLM, and 70 SMN. I tanked the RDM mob while the SMN, RDM, BLM and RNG beat the **** out of the PLD. Wasn't too hard until the RDM mob used Chainspell and barraged me with spells, nearly killing me. After her defeat, I tanked the PLD with ease. No deaths occured. GL to whoever wins.

Just did this with what seemed like a very shorthanded setup at first:

69PLD/WAR 70RNG/NIN 70RDM/BLM (me)

Initial plan: We knew taking on both of the Queens at once was suicide, so we tried to do the same Sneak-pull method we had used for the Jacks in one of those previous missions. It still worked like a charm, yay ^^ Ended up pulling the Queen of Swords (PLD) and left Coins all alone to despawn. We fought this one because we weren't sure how devastating Coins's Chainspell would be; but we knew Invincible was no big deal.

Bear in mind that if you use this despawn trick for this mission, or any other mission with multiple NM pops, the NM(s) you leave behind MUST be allowed to despawn first before you kill your pulled NM. Otherwise, the game will think you gave up on the fight and you will not get credit.

Each of us played a vital role in the fight and all 3 of us were "useful", which I think is awesome, when you compare it to the kinds of missions where you bring in a big alliance of level 75s and just dominate the thing... made it a lot more fun doing it this way. I did the typical sit back and Refresh/Dispel/enfeeble/heal routine, PLD tanked with Earth Staff (Spirit Taker will not always be effective on this guy, but the 20% damage reduction helped a ton), and RNG was the primary DD, and probably did around 95% of the damage by throwing random Slug Shots.

Nearing the end of the fight, Queen tried to do Cure 4 a couple of times, but I think each time Paralyze managed to stop it, luckily for us. Ended up taking it pretty much down to the wire (MP was nearly dry and all were in orange HP) but managed to get the win. Only 2HR used was Invincible, and I don't think that was even necessary. Ended up getting somewhere around 70-80 EXP as a little bonus (unfortunately, I was still rank 5 and not flagged to do this mission, I was just there for support XD).

Anyway, long story short, this mission becomes a lot simpler to do if you fight only one; at that point even the simplest of setups and smallest of teams stands a good chance of winning. Have fun ^^

just my lil story, i helped a vewy good friend for the 2 card nm so i went first with him to try to duo it.

My buddy was thf64/smn for carby pull the pld, i was nin75/war and the fight begin pretty well until the pld cast protect4 on him ***** pld high def :X) and spam his attack that remove 3 shadow at once :X i told my buddy to flee and i will Mijin Gakure but the pld finished me and i die.

I was pretty angry and decide to give it a second try, i hate lost lol so i came back as nin75/rdm37, i buy a rollanberry pie for food and 5 yagudo drink (i do same when i solo prime avatar)and go again for it, the fight was really lot time easyer, i was able to heal myuself keep stoneskin up in case my shadow was down and after like 15 min fightin we owned the NM ^.^

So a nin75/rdm37 can solo it, just need to be prepared dispel his protect4, all my debuf always stick (Kuryami Hojo jubaku) on it and keep stoneskin up at all time and this fight is really easy ^.^ sneak yourself pop the nm and pull them with range attack (they aggro to magic i think not sure tough).

Well is is how I completed, But first the story Myself RDM75/SMN29 (gimmped I know for mp regen and carby) and a friend WAR71/NIN35 we went in and I Buffed and Sneak spawned and pulled her with Carby worked perfect. I used the Bind and Gravity method to nuke with Blizzard III and kite worked like a charm. Sleep very hard if possiable at all. Converts were easy to I'de Bind then the War watched him as I ran around other side and Converted in peace. The only spells he casted were Banish II, Flash, Cure IV Protect IV, and Shell III when I would Despel her. She only casted Cure when she was around 20-25%HP and around the time she used Invincibility to. So I kited her for a min or so and War was @300Tp and ready He provoked and mob Turned he started his WS macro then She cam after me! Tp & 2hr gone and im KO'ed and war wasnt to far behind. But She was @2% Hp so close. We tried once more unsucessful so thats when I recruited a 75BRD/37WHM and a 71THF/35NIN and the War changed to 75PLD/37NIN. I use sam tactic to get him to his @2Hr point then malee unload SATA and WS and I became the meat shield due to all the hate from killing him solo. She casted one Cure IV and is finished. So she can be soloed down to 20-25% with a RDM or BLM/RDM but no way will you get off enough damage and heal yourself to finishe her. So bring 2 good malee best would be War/Nin and Thf/Nin for Rampage and SATA Dancing Edge. Over all it was not hard at all just a little RDM solo tactics and fast DD at the end for the kill. She is based on fire and very weak to gravity and bind from what I seen while fighting. The WS she has is Very damageing to myself "Deal Out" 400damage advrage so Blink SS and Phalanx are a must. GL I hope this helps a little.

this works!! have a thf pull and flee to zone making sure the cards follow while party is waiting at zone. when you zone wait a minute or so and go in and find the cards...one moves faster than other...pull that one and kill....real easy when they are seperated. when you go back to the wall instead of card poppin again fight should be done and only one card had to be defeated, i believe we killed the PLD

I did this last night as SMN70 with a BLM75 friend. I pulled the PLD and tried Titan-tanking it with Mountain Buster, but wasn't doing quite enough damage and ran out of MP after only getting it down about 1/4 of the way and resorted to Carby-kiting.

The BLM had hate by then from casting some enfeebles, so he ran around and let Carbuncle get some free hits in, which whittled the mob down half way. After that, the BLM would just bind the Cardian, cast Thunder IV and Blizzard IV, I would get a Meteorite off, then we went back to kiting.

Was really a fun fight, if anything from the hilarity of running around in circles with this Cardian chasing us. Took us about 30-45 mins (with the first half being we didn't know wtf to do^^), and the RDM Cardian despawned while we were fighting. If I would have stuck to Carby-kiting, this would definitely have been soloable.

I don't know if you just got lucky or not, but it definately wouldn't be soloable with Carby kiting. Near the end when his health is low he will spam Cure IV to keep it above 25%. You need to be able to output a lot of DMG to kill the PLD mob, I'm sure the same can be said for the RDM one as well.

Just attempted this today. 65WHM 69BRD 72RDM. We ended up teleporting out since we couldn't budge his HP in the end.

Me and two friends just duo and/or trio'd this. Two 75 RDM/37 NINs and a 71 BLM/35 WHM.

My friend took the RDM and I took the PLD and we fought side by side, each tanking one, and the BLM served as healer/debuffer. Once it wasn't looking too good so we Escaped but came back and totally rocked it. It felt like it took forever.. but that was the most fun and excitement I've had in such a long time. It really keeps you on your toes.

Did the mission after this too, and plan on Rank 10 later today, hope all goes well ^^ and good luck to those whom do this mission in the future.

searhing through search comments for anyone needing the mission i found a 70 rdm by the name of shmii saying he needed the mission. I sent him a tell to see if he wanted to look for a pt and when we couldnt find anyone, we decided we were going to duo it.

64 rdm and a 70 rdm sent off and it took us about 45 minutes and 2 converts each. We pulled the pld one away with carby and just kept up dia, gravity, poison, drown, shock, and frost until it just kept curing itself at 1/4 life. In which time he ES + Bind the cardian and we finished it off with a quick couple of nukes. Lot of fun, little dangerous but def can done solo by a 70+ rdm i think. Im gonna try and solo this one for a friend of mine in a little bit, hope i have the same luck.

searhing through search comments for anyone needing the mission i found a 70 rdm by the name of shmii saying he needed the mission. I sent him a tell to see if he wanted to look for a pt and when we couldnt find anyone, we decided we were going to duo it.

64 rdm and a 70 rdm sent off and it took us about 45 minutes and 2 converts each. We pulled the pld one away with carby and just kept up dia, gravity, poison, drown, shock, and frost until it just kept curing itself at 1/4 life. In which time he ES + Bind the cardian and we finished it off with a quick couple of nukes. Lot of fun, little dangerous but def can done solo by a 70+ rdm i think. Im gonna try and solo this one for a friend of mine in a little bit, hope i have the same luck.

Thank you! ^_^ I was afraid everyone was gonna keep calling her a him ~_~

And if the name thing isn't enough, Shantoto in this very mission reffers to Apururu as Ajido-Marujido's sister ^_^ In early missions and quests or whatever it's-been-so-long-I-forgot-exactly what, she's reffered to as his siter a lot ^_^

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return."

Just duo'ed this fight as 75RDM/SMN with a 75BLM/RDM. I casted Sneak and spawned the NMs, then did a Carbuncle pull on the Swords. This prevented both Cards from linking. Then, we kept Gravity/Bind on Swords while running it around, letting DoT do it's thing and casting the occassional nuke. Was dead in about 5 minutes, no problem. The other Cardian despawned.

Based on this experience, I'd have to say it's entirely possible to solo this as RDM. Just remember to sub SMN for the carbuncle pull, and alternate between Gravity/Bind to keep it at bay.

Like the title suggests, this mission, for a Rank 9 mission, was way too easy. NIN72 WHM71 RDM67 and it was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

A trick, however, made it a lot easier than it's supposed to be. Have your WHM (or whoever) sub SMN for Carby. The person who is popping the NMs has to Sneak up before clicking the wall. This way, the NMs won't aggro when they spawn. Have your person with Carby assault him on the Queen of Coins (the RDM one. I say the Coins NM over the Swords simply because RDM is easier to kill =\). Let Carby die, and Queen of Coins will chase back to camp. There, just ... kill it! One thing, it does uses Chainspell, but nothing too bad. Our NIN got hit once the whole time, but I have filters on so I couldn't see for how much. At about 1/2-1/4 health left, the Queen of Swords will despawn, leaving you for a clear wall after the Coins is dead. Click it for a cutscene then do what the mission guide says up there.

We pulled the PLD with Carbuncle and fought him off slowly. I nuked slowly with Blizzard2/3 so I wouldn't get that much hate. He invicibled @ 60% HP. By the time we finished him, the RDM Despawned. We got CS, and now we're rank9 :P

Used Elemental Seal + SleepgaII and SleepII (with Enfeebling Magic at 212) several times on the mob, but to no avail. They are probably immune to sleep or extremely resistant to it, so it might be wise to devise a plan without depending on sleeping one while fighting another.

Both NMs defeated with a single party of mostly Lv71s - PLD/DRK/THF/BLM/WHM/WHM.

this is not a very hard mission just a lot of running. we learned a semi way to cheat the mission too. when you kill the two nms you don't actually have to kill both. we sneaked the tank and he spawned the cardians. we proceeded to pull one with carby and it took us a while to get the cardian killed. by the time we finished working on the first one the second one despawned. well we were able to get the cutscene. i am enjoying my new rank 9 and my extra 80k.

Can't wait to do this mission sounds easy. I'll be doing it in next couple days, and post results.

Edit - Collecting the first four rings was an easy thing, just lots of walking around. One of the things that I found interesting is that the Book of the gods that was restored in a previous mission (but for some reason we kept in our key items) sheds more of the story here. I was hoping that I didn't have to keep lugging this obviously important book around with no more storyline to it.. kewl

Well I finally found enough people to help me do this, all I wanted was a party of level 65+ but wound up with a couple 72's and an extra half a party. We rightfully trounced the PLD, and the RDM despawned right before the PLD died. We all checked the wall for the Orastery ring. IMPORTANT NOTE : If someone forgets to talk to Kuipipi or Apururu before coming, they may still do so even at this point so long as the party stays together and collect the last ring without killing the NM again. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you, but it's good to know. You probably have a window of opportunity like 60 mins or so maybe a few hours even.

First time: tried to fight these guys, we got punked, hard core. (A party of about 7). Second time: Ok.... This is funny as **** and shouldn't have worked, but it did. Same group. We cast sneak on our pld.. He checked the door. Cards didn't aggro. o,o I used carbuncle to pull the red mage card. Fairly easy fight for us. When we returned to the door the pld card despawned, we checked the door on got the cut scene o.O; Cheapest tactics ever.